Uppercase Woman

Another Meme

Elise tagged me with this a while ago...

Six Weird Things About Me

1. I am obsessed with keeping the underside of my nails clean. I pick them clean with anything I can find, but mostly I clean them with my teeth. I have a gap in the middle of my bottom teeth and it is just perfect for scraping my teeth clean. Sadly, I usually end up scraping off half my nail too, making my nails brittle and thin. And, when camping, I could care less. It's just when I'm not camping they have to be clean.

2. I have one eyebrow hair that would, if I let it, grow up to two inches long. I know this because it often gets that long before I find it. I have no idea how it hides, or if suddenly grows overnight or what. Even when I'm diligent about seeking it out, it often gets to be an inch long before I find it.

3. I have never, not once, trimmed/shaved/waxed my pubes. EVER. It' s not that I don't want to (except waxing--can't have that done. I swell up something awful whenever I wax my eyebrows, I can't imagine what it would do down there). I might be more interested in trimming down there if I could actually see it; thanks to my stupid motherfucking pannis (no, that's not mine in the photo, I wish mine were that small). I have plans (once I return to my normal weight after the baby) to get my pannis removed, and then perhaps burn it. Oh, and Charlie seems to have no preferences as far as pubic hair goes.

4. I like porn. Yep, really. And not that "erotica" crap. I like hardcore.

5.  I have been an insomniac since I was little girl. When I was three or four years old, I would crawl naked out my bedroom window and go play in my front yard in the middle of the night (we lived in a ranch-style house in New Mexico back then) for hours until I finally got sleepy. My mother never knew. Once I got older, I'd get up and play with my hair for hours on end, trying out a million bizarre hairstyles until I had to go to school.

6.  This isn't really weird unless you aren't an addict, but it's the only other thing I can think of. When I got the surgery that terminated my pregnancy with the boys, I was given an intravenous shot of Fentanyl. Even as I lay there sobbing, I remember pausing a moment and thinking, "Damn, that was good." Recently in my city there was a rash of heroin-related overdoses; it turns out that the heroin was laced with Fentanyl. When I heard that--ex junkie that I am--I actually drooled involuntarily.

So there you go! Feel free to provide your own weirdness in the comments or consider yourself tagged and put it on your blog...

Funnies and Links

So after reading all the successful induction stories, I've decided that we should really get prepared for a possible vaginal birth. That means watch the rest of the birthing class tape Chantal loaned me, listening to the hypnobirthing CD's that Moxie made me, and starting to do perineal massage.

So this morning I cornered Charlie while he was on the toilet and read the perineal massage instructions from this book that Robin sent me.

Charlie looked stricken. "Isn't that going to hurt?"

"I don't think so!" I responded.

"It's like trying to stretch out my ball sack or something!" He made a horrible face while saying this.

"No, dear" I said, "Your ball sack isn't designed to pass a baby through it."

"And thank God for that." He responded.

_______________________________________________

If you want a good laugh, go read this guide to being a Christian wife. And be sure to read the comments so that you can know that it is NOT a parody. My favorite part: "A fat husband is a faithful one!" Oh, and how we're all going to hell. See ya there!

Thanks to Brutal Women for the link.

_______________________________________________

Also funny is this video of a Saturday Night Live cartoon. NBC, which airs SNL, is owned by GE. Apparently, it was only allowed to air once before GE made them pull it from reruns.

______________________________________________

I'm off tomorrow (have to work Saturday) and I'm hoping to spend the day sawing branches off my holly tree and not posting, so enjoy your weekend!

Data

Holy Fucking CRAP.

308 comments on that last post (at the time of THIS post).

417 different birth stories.

My head is swimming. As I read them all (and yes, I read them all, EVERY SINGLE ONE) I would find myself getting stuck on certain details; for a while it was the stillbirths. Then it was the degrees of vaginal tears. Then it was the volume of fluid when water was broken.

In order to sort it all out, I have reduced your incredibly thoughtful and well-told and deeply personal birth stories to a data spread sheet (I'm weird; I love spread sheets). It really helped  me sort all the stories out and actually step back to look at the basic facts.

A lot of my presumptions have been challenged. I find it really quite fascinating.

So here it is. A completely non-scientific assessment of your birth stories, compiled from the random sample of women (and man) that read my blog:

417     Total Births

248     Vaginal Deliveries (60% of total births)

169     c-sections (40% of total births)

95     "Natural" Deliveries (with or without epidurals, but no inductions; 23% of total births)

3         "Natural" Deliveries that ended with c-sections (3% of all "natural" births)

211     Births Induced/Assisted with Pitocin (51% of total births)

58       Inductions that ended up with c-sections (14% of all inductions)

70        Scheduled c-sections (17% of total births, 42% of all C-Sections)

38         Emergency c-sections (9% of total births, 23% of all C-Sections)

21         Pre-eclampsia/HELLP Related Inductions (5% of total births, 10% of all inductions)

4             Gestational Diabetes Related Inductions (1% of total births, 2% of all inductions)

8            Number of stillbirths (2%  of total births)

3             Number of complications following vaginal births (1% of total births, 1% of vaginal births)

5            Number of complications following c-sections (1% of total births, 2% of all C-Sections)

4            Number of successful VBAC (.09% of total births, 1.5% of vaginal births)

...

Other trends that emerged:

Recovery Times, in speed order (fastest first):

• unassisted vaginal birth
• assisted vaginal birth
• scheduled c-section (nearly tied w/assisted vaginal birth)
• c-section following labor
• emergency c-section

There were lots of stories in there involving tearing and other damage as a result of vaginal births, women who weren't happy about that result (and felt that they hadn't been adequately warned).

Also, it does seem that fat chicks have a more difficult time recovering from c-sections.

Lastly, it appears that inductions scheduled AFTER a baby's due date are slightly more likely to end up needing a c-section.

________________________________________

What fascinated me about this all the most is that, contrary to what I'd thought, most inductions go quite successfully, and only 14% TOTAL end up with c-sections. I had no idea. I thought the number was much, much, much higher. Really.

Also, I am rather shocked to know that over half of the births required pitocin. Does that shock anyone else?

I feel much better about the idea of induction now, and your stories have helped me formulate the questions I need to bring up with Dr. Mama.

Thank you so much for sharing them all!

I am going to go quietly celebrate my birthday now. :)

On My Mind **STILL READING COMMENTS--keep 'em coming!**

I think I'm going to do a series of posts this week about what's on my mind regarding the pregnancy. It's going to be all pregnancy crap all the time, so feel free to turn away if you need to. I wish I could tell you I have something else on my mind, but I really just don't.

Last week I felt like the baby's birth was rushing toward us like a fast-moving train. This week, though, it feels once again as if time has slowed down to the slowest possible creep and I will NEVER actually give birth to this baby.

Maybe it's because I'm spending so much time thinking about the birth itself.

As most of you know, my doctors don't want me to go beyond 38 weeks. This is because of my high blood pressure; it's my understanding that the risk of pre-eclampsia jumps up significantly in the last two weeks of pregnancy, so they'd rather just skip that risk entirely.

So that means an  induction.

I've come to realize that I have some feelings about this. Strong ones. Possibly unreasonable ones, but strong ones nonetheless.

Those feelings tell me that I would rather just schedule a c-section instead of doing induction.

Now, calm down. Take a deep breath. Bear with me, OK?

I am not an idiot; I realize that an unmedicated vaginal birth is the very best possible choice for me and the baby.

I KNOW.

But chances are, it's not going to happen. I will most likely have to have pitocin to induce labor. And I've witnessed a friend attempt to avoid getting an epidural while she received pitocin, and it wasn't pretty and I won't do it (all that happened is that she was in horrible pain and that delayed the dilation of her cervix).

So that means an epidural. I've had one before--I was given an epidural plus twilight sedation for the surgery that terminated my pregnancy with the twins. I'm not afraid of an epidural at all, but I don't feel like that qualifies me as having an "unmedicated" birth.

I also know too many women who didn't progress with induction. Most had to have a c-section anyway. And then there are the "baby is in distress" issues that end up requiring a c-section as well.

I also suspect that this baby, already ahead of average by a pound, is going to be HUGE at birth, complicating an induced vaginal delivery.

Charlie is also uncomfortable with the idea of forceps being used (with good reason, as I've said before; the nerves in his right shoulder were crushed by forceps during his birth, permanently damaging his right arm). Having a large baby increases the chances of forceps being used in a vaginal delivery.

Lastly, if the baby ends up in distress during an induction, I won't be able to take it. Seriously. My friend Jo-Ann's baby's heart rate decreased during contractions, and the other OB's on duty were freaking out and yelling for her to get a c-section, but Dr. Mama (Jo-Ann is the gal that referred me to the fab Dr. Mama) calmly pointed out that the baby's heart rate rebounded fine, and cautioned patience. Jo-Ann delivered vaginally.

But I'm not Jo-Ann. I will freak right the fuck out if the baby has one single nanosecond of distress during the birth. My heart will just crack in half, I'm telling you. As you all know, my complicated birth plan is "GET BABY OUT ALIVE" and I will not be able to emotionally handle being at the finish line and have something go wrong.

I won't, I tell you. I won't.

So. A huge part of me is leaning towards a scheduled c-section. In fact, when I think of scheduling the c-section, therefore guaranteeing that Dr. Mama will be present for my delivery, I can actually feel my blood pressure drop as relief floods my brain and heart.

It's not optimal. But it would be such a relief.

Now, the world seems to be in two camps on this issue. Camp One, the "Vaginal Delivery No Matter What, C-Sections Are A Medical Horror" camp is already posting comments about how I shouldn't be so hasty, that c-sections are harder to recover from, and I will ruin any chance of a vaginal delivery in the future (to which I say HA HA HA HA HA--like I am EVER going to do this again).

I'll remind you , first off, that I tried to do the natural thing with the twins. I fought long and hard to use midwives (it was very hard to find midwives that would agree to deliver twins). The result was that my pregnancy-induced hypertension went untreated, my pre-eclampsia symptoms were ignored, and I was unceremoniously kicked out of the practice at 18 weeks because of the hypertension.

So the midwife thing doesn't always work out.

I swear, I am not an idiot; I am not considering this lightly.

I'm happy to do anything natural to induce my labor. I'll drink gallons of Cod Liver Oil (like Jo!), have sex, dance on one leg, whatever. Plus there's the stuff they insert in your cervix to help induce, that's fine too. I'm perfectly willing to try all of that first.

But the whole hospital induction? Not so much.

The second camp, the "C-Sections Are Cool and Easy To Recover From, Why Get All Tired And Sweaty" is already posting comments supporting my decision. I thank you, but I don't think major abdominal surgery is something to take lightly.

So there you have it.

Rather than promote one view or the other, what would really help me is if you could share your experience. Tell me how you gave birth, how long your recovery was, and if you wish things had gone differently. I've heard a lot of your stories already, but it would be nice to see an overview to help me make this decision. Plus I think it will help me formulate questions to ask Dr. Mama when I see him, since I know he'd really like to see me give birth vaginally.

So play nice, and just share your experience. I really need to hear it without all the hysteria surrounding birth methods... Please?

30 Weeks

Wow. Past the big three-o. The same week I turn the big ol' 38. My birthday is on Wednesday, but I find that I haven't been thinking about it in the least. Charlie asked me this morning what I wanted for my birthday and I have no idea, other than having this baby. That's the "birth" day that I'm focused on.

Of course, it has not escaped me that when my mother was 38, I was 18 and had already been living on my own for a year. Lordy. I don't know how she did it.

This Friday I finally responded to Moxie's nagging took Moxie's advice and went and saw my chiropractor in hopes of addressing the hip pain, the symphysis pubis dysfunction, and the baby's position. Apparently, there is a something Moxie told me about called the Webster Technique that helps babies move out of the breech position (if you remember, our baby was transverse at the last ultrasound, which is technically one of the breech positions, at least according this and to an episode of Babies: Special Delivery that I saw). Chris, my chiro, was familiar with the technique and all I can say is WOW.

He popped my right hip back into place, because it was apparently floating somewhere over in the next state. This has relieved my hip fatigue tremendously (I call it fatigue now instead of pain because now that I have the pubic bone pain I realize the difference). Then he did something to the muscles/ligaments on my left side and then cracked my neck (I have chronic neck issues).

I am not Tom Cruise, so I don't own my own ultrasound machine to see if the baby actually moved, BUT I do feel a tremendous lightening of pressure in my pelvic region, and where we find the heartbeat with the Doppler has changed. All I know is that I feel better. Thank god.

__________________________________________________

Sarah came by before she went off to the Tequila Con and took photos of the nursery with her digital camera (slightly better quality than mine, which of course is my cell phone). Take a look. With captions! And a belly shot!

__________________________________________________

And last but not least, if you haven't seen this ad for the Honda Element, please watch. Because from now on, I will often be saying, "Why no pinch?"

Blah blah blah...

Not up to much today. We had an old friend come visit and stay over last night (hi Griffin!) and we talked for hours and hours and I think it used up all my words.

Oh, get this: Griffin told us about a friend he has in New York City who is, shall we say, well to do. She was considering having her daughter's first birthday at a four-star milkshake and hot dog stand (yes, in NYC they have four-star hot dog stands). The price?

$25,000 a hour.

A motherfucking HOUR.

Holy shit.

With that thought, enjoy your weekend. I'll be doing fun things like seeing movies and cleaning out closets cause it's going to rain all weekend here. Sigh.

Shaved Pussy

Ah, the Google hits I'll get now.

Meet Dylan. He's technically Sarah's cat--she left him with us when she went to rehab--but since he's been living with us for over ten years, I guess he's ours. Dylan has two problems; first, he broke his back somehow about six years ago. He did it while we were away, so we have no idea how it happened. It healed well enough, but he has much less flexibility than a normal cat. Add to that his second problem, his obesity, well (oddly, he's our only fat cat--everyone else is normal). He can't groom his back very well so his hair gets all matted. Which means about once a year or so we get to make him look like this:

Bad Day/Good Day!

Yesterday ended badly. I felt sad and mopey for most of the day after starting it by arguing with Charlie, plus my pelvic pain became excruciating. It was so bad that when I went home and was changing out of my skirt that I actually fell onto the bed and sobbed for a half-hour straight.

Plus, after prodding him mercilessly, Charlie went and actually applied for the home equity loan. The friendly loan man became considerably less friendly after he got a look at our actual credit picture (mine is so bad we have to pretend that I don't exist). Sigh. There may be no Element in our future (we were gonna buy a used one too!) after all. I'll have to live with the "sproing."

Bad day.

Today I feel much less hip pain, although for some random ass reason my left ankle is hurting (whatEVER). I actually felt well enough this morning that we were able to knock a couple things off that list; we bathed the dog (and used conditioner, he is now all silky and soft), and shaved the cat. I'll have to remember to take a photo of the cat--he looks unbelievably silly. He has a four-inch bald patch from between his shoulder blades to the base of his tail. But he smells better!

I know you all wanted me to go to a groomer, but it's hard to do that when I've got eight years of cat shaving and dog bathing under my belt (from when I was a vet tech). You know how hard it is to pay someone to do something you can easily do yourself! We just wrapped the cat's head in a towel and Charlie held him while I shaved. Done and done.

Very satisfying.

I also had a meeting at work today to confirm all the plans for my maternity leave (maternity! leave!). My last day at work will be May 12. I will return at the end of August. I will work from home about eight hours a week which will give me 100% of my regular pay. The two weeks right after the baby is born I won't work from home at all, but I can use a couple of my saved vacation days so I will still get 100% of my pay.

I won't even have to use up the three weeks of vacation I've been saving. I can use those in the fall to shorten my weeks and make the transition less stressful for all of us.

I. LOVE. MY. JOB.

My boss saw me limping today and said if I have to go out of work earlier, that's totally fine and it will all work out.

I. LOVE. MY. BOSS.

I may not make very much money (I really don't--most administrative assistants make more than I do), but I have a great place to come every day.

GOOD DAY.

__________________________________________

Several of you noticed that nine weeks from now at 29 weeks pregnant adds up to only 38 weeks pregnant, not a full 40 weeks. Can't put anything over on you people, can I?

Because of my blood pressure, they don't want to let me go beyond 38 weeks. So I'll either be induced or have a c-section at that point. We shall see.

Oh, and induced! c-section!

__________________________________________

Hands down, the rectal thermometer won (for very little babies).  Got it.

__________________________________________

Lastly, I have to thank Tanya for the wonderful additions of Piglet and Tigger to my the baby's Pooh collection. They are adorable! And here's proof*:

Pardon the quality, that is a cell phone camera being used. And yes, the walls in the room are green. A lovely sage green.

As for the rest of the nursery (nursery!), here ya go:

This is Charlie's toy chest from childhood. Very Pennsylvania Dutch.

This is, we think, an Ikea piece initially meant for the kitchen. However, once we took off the wheels and cleaned it up a bit, it works great for a baby's room. This lovely item was trash picked. On top of it you see Mr. Beaver from the Chronicles of Narnia (which is actually mine, thank you very  much, but I'll share), the "Miracle" set of clothes to bring the baby home from the hospital, and the box our last item comes in:

Sarah bought this for the baby all the way back at Christmas. In case you can't tell, the spoon says "Choo Choo" and features a steam train engine, in deference to Charlie's rail-fan hobby.

Plus, with the deepest irony, it guarantees that our child will be born with a silver spoon in it's mouth. Heh. Particularly funny when every item in the nursery, down to the sheets on the crib, were given to us.

We are very, very, very lucky people.

*We won't leave the toys in the crib when the baby is in there. We are SIDS aware, I assure you. We plan to get a shelf for them instead...

Instincts

I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but I have to say I feel a bit like I’ve been blindsided by the nesting instinct. I find myself thinking nearly constantly about all the things that need to be done; it’s actually rather exhausting.

It’s not always about the baby or the baby’s room (I said it again! The baby’s room! Ack!) either. I often find myself thinking about gardening, and organizing, and cleaning various things. Or shaving the cat’s back, things like that.

Here’s a list of things I’d like to get done, oh, sometime in the next week:

1. Shave and bathe Dylan the cat (he’s too fat to groom his own back, so he’s all matted back there). Of course, he hates both things (shaving and bathing) and bit me badly the last time I bathed him, so it's a rather risky proposition.

2. Trim the shrubs on the side of the house so they no longer scrape against the windows.

3. Trim the holly bush on the side of the house so it becomes more of a tree and less of a shrub (it is actually as tall as our whole house, but the branches go all the way to the ground). When I say trim, I really mean use a saw to hack off all the lower branches up to about eight feet off the ground. And yes, I’d like to do it myself, because sawing off branches is very gratifying. Then I'd like to rake out all the fall leaves that are stuck under it. Oh, and mulch so it looks pretty.

4. Empty out the closet in the baby’s room.

5. Plant three hydrangea bushes and some impatiens in the front yard.

6. Buy a bunch of hanging flowers for the porch and back yard, which also means putting in new hooks/thingies that the plants can hang from. Plus we need a better arrangement for the new birdfeeder on the porch we got to torment our cats.

7. Clean the basement so that Charlie will feel safe having the baby down there (his office is down there, and he works from home and will be with the baby during the day). It’s the cat’s refuge (as in, that’s where the litter pans are and the food is, although they are in a separate “room” from the office), and since I stopped cleaning the pans at about ten weeks pregnant, it’s gotten pretty gross. Possibly find a way to buy long sheets of thick plastic that we could hang over the door to the room with the litter pans to help decrease the smell. Or maybe a cat door for that room.

8. Clean the dining room closet out and put all the coats away. This means buying something that the coats can be put in for storage in the basement where they won’t get smelly from the litter pans.

9. Bathe the dog, who has gotten a tad smelly.

10. Take out a home equity loan, pay off all our credit cards, and buy a new car. I’d like to a Honda Element (for about a million reasons, but one of the big ones is that you can HOSE IT OUT--on the inside!).

.

.

.

And those are just the handful of things I can think of right this second. I lie awake thinking about this shit.

Charlie and I were attempting to discuss the home equity thing (he’s been working on it for a bit, investigating the best deal and what not) and I lost my shit and yelled at him for dragging his feet. The reason being that since we got the ball joint on the car fixed, every time we hit the brakes the tire goes “sproing” because the ball joint isn’t a Subaru part and the antilock brake sensor doesn’t quite connect properly. Even though the mechanics have pronounced it perfectly safe, I hate the noise, and hate the thought of a baby being in a car that makes that noise. It’s unreasonable, but what can I do.

So we fought about it as he drove me to work, and then I sat in the car sullenly not speaking to him for ten minutes. Even though I hate a bunch of chocolate as soon as I got to work, and called him to apologize, I still feel crappy.

Fucking hormones. If I weren’t pregnant, I’d say I had the worst case of PMS ever. Now I feel totally emotionally hung-over and depressed.

Sigh.

________________________________________

On a totally unrelated note, I have questions for you folks… if ya don’t mind too much!

 

1. Which do thermometer you like for taking a baby’s temperature? Ear? Rectal? Pacifier? Or this weird ass one?

2. This blog has been tagged somehow by some weird images. For some reason, Google is directing people who click on this image to my site, and that in turn then refers you to this site, which is a university in some Latin American country (sorry, my Spanish sucks, so I can’t figure out where exactly that university is). So now I’m getting a zillion hits from places like Uruguay, and I don’t know how that happened and how to make it stop.

3. A similar thing has happened with this image. This image is quite a bit funnier, but I still don’t know why my site comes up in that search. Any thoughts?

For both images, the Google searches say that it was NOT found on my site (like this); yet I keep getting hits from them. Help!

ONLY NINE FUCKING WEEKS LEFT! Plus, an ultrasound and OB update

Yup. 29 weeks today. And guess what? The baby has furniture!

Sarah, Pete and our friend Siobhan came by on Saturday to help me and Charlie move things around and set up the baby's room (did I just say the baby's room? Yikes!). I promise, I didn't do anything; my blood pressure has been too high (well, we thought it was high; more on that later). I sat on the floor and read the instructions to Sarah and Siobhan and they put the crib together (somehow during the crib construction, the men disappeared entirely. I think it had something to do with coffee).

Not surprisingly, having the crib up with a sheet, a blanket, and a mobile (plus a couple stuffed animals) makes it all seem real.

Wow.

Only nine weeks until this baby is born, people. NINE MOTHERFUCKING WEEKS.

Wow.

So, we had both an ultrasound and an OB appointment this morning.

The ultrasound showed that the baby is comfortably transverse, using my wide hips as a  hammock (no wonder I feel so much fucking pressure!). No one is alarmed at this point, of course; it's too early for that kind of worry (NINE FUCKING WEEKS!!!). Placenta is still posterior with no previa.

The ultrasound also showed that the baby currently weighs 3 pounds and 9 ounces. This places the baby in the 80th percentile, growth wise, up from the 58th percentile at last month's ultrasound (no wonder I've been so damned hungry). According to the baby books, the kiddo is now putting on a hefty 1/2 pound a week, meaning in NINE FUCKING WEEKS the baby will weigh over eight pounds (depending on this that and the other thing, of course) when it's born,  should we make it that far (yada yada yada).

The ultrasound did NOT show the baby's sex. I'm telling ya, this baby is determined to keep it a secret. We even had a tech-in-training working this morning who spent the twenty minutes between the scan and the meeting with the doctor trying, over and over, to see the baby's crotch to no avail. Little brat (*grin*).

The OB appointment was uneventful; no protein in my urine, my blood pressure was 130/90 which is at the high end of normal but we can all live with it. We'd thought we were getting some really high readings at home (like 160/110) but it turned out that I have killed another large blood pressure cuff, so now we're using a tiny one on my lower arm. That is working out OK, although it reads a little higher than the proper sized cuff. I have not decided if I'm willing to buy another large cuff (our third) since there are only NINE FUCKING WEEKS LEFT. My fasting glucoses continue to be normal; I may escape gestational diabetes entirely (frantically knocking on wood).

If we weren't us, this would look like a normal fucking pregnancy. But stay tuned! Who knows what will happen next...